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Memorial of Champlain 

DISCOVERER OF MT. DESERT 
1604-1904 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2010 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/memorialofsamuelOOgilm 



MEMORIAL 



O F 



>amiwl to (£tyixmpimn 



WHO DISCOVERED 



The Island of Mt. Desert 



MAINE 



September j" , 1604 



PRIVATELY PRINTED 
I906 






§>ubarrtbrrs tn the (Eijamplaut iHrmnrial, 1904 



Mrs. Edwin H. Abbot 
Misses Bi.anchard 
Miss Blodgett 
Mrs. E. W. Clark 
Miss Frances Clark 
Miss Harriet Clarke 
Mrs. Josiah P. Cooke 
George B. Cooksey 
Rev. Dr. J. S. Dennis 
Rt. Rev. W. C. Doane 
Edward K. Dunham, M. D. 
President C. W. Eliot 
William W. Frazier 
James T. Gardiner 
Daniel C Gilman 
Mrs. Zabriskie Gray 



Mrs. G. G. Hayward 
R. M. Hoe 

Mrs. Elijah Hubbard 
President and Mrs. Seth I,ow 
Commander M. A. Miller, U. S. N 
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Parkman 
Rev. Dr. F. G. Peabody 
Miss Prime 
James Ford Rhodes 
Mr. And Mrs. Winthrop Sargent 
Rev. Dr. Cornelius B. Smith 
Rt. Rev. A. Mackay-Smith 
William W. Spence 
George L,. Stebbins 
Mr. and Mrs. J. G. Thorp 
Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Wheelwright 
Roger. Wolcott 



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YVU. jd.C CIaJ^a^c 

IS '06 



Slntrnfturtog Nut? 

' I V HE Three Hundredth Anniversary of the dis- 
covery of the Island of Mount Desert was cele- 
brated at North East Harbor September 5, 1904. 
Addresses were made in the Union Church by Presi- 
dent Eliot, of Harvard University, and by Hon. Seth 
Low, late President of Columbia University. 

Shortly afterwards a number of the summer visitors 
at North East Harbor and Seal Harbor contributed 
a sum sufficient for placing a moss-covered stone 
tablet, with suitable inscriptions, on a point of land 
east of Seal Harbor, which affords a fine view of the 
coast, from the Atlantic to the Western Way, the 
route followed by Champlain. 

On the 1 8th of July, 1906, the contributors to the 
fund, and a few of their friends, assembled near the 
Memorial Stone and listened to a brief recital of the 
events connected with Champlain's voyage, by Rev. 
Samuel A. Eliot, D. D. The tablets were then 
unveiled by Wright Ludington, the youngest person 
present. President Eliot read the inscriptions, and 
added a few remarks upon the characteristics of 
Champlain. The verses which are here printed were 
then recited by the author of them, Rev. Professor 
William Adams Brown, of New York. 

D. C. G. 



ilttsrnpiums 



OBVERSE. 

In Honor of 

Samuel de Champlain 

Born in France 1567 

Died at Quebec 1635 

A Soldier Sailor Explorer 

and Administrator 

Who Gave This Island Its Name. 

REVERSE. 

The same day we passed also near 

an island about four or five leagues long. 

* * * it is very high, notched in places, 

so as to appear from the sea 

like a range of seven or eight mountains 

close together. the summits of most of them 

are bare of trees for they are nothing 

but rock. * * * i named it the 

Island of the Desert Mountains. 

Champlain's Journal 5 Sept., 1604. 



KhhnBB bg K*ti. £>aum* l A. iElwt, I. i. 

MEW ENGLAND was called New France for 
fifty years before Captain John Smith gave it 
its present name. Fifteen years before the Mayflower 
came to anchor in Plymouth Harbor its waters had 
been sounded and its outlines drawn by Champlain 
and his comrades. The Pilgrims, had they known 
of it, might have bought, ere they sailed, at a little 
shop in the Rue St. Jean de Beauvais in Paris, a 
chart of Plymouth Harbor remarkable for its 
accuracy and skill. Twenty-five years before John 
Winthrop and his company landed on the Peninsula 
where they planted Boston, these same Frenchmen 
had mapped the bay, described its features with sur- 
prising fidelity, and named its points and inlets. 

The effort at French colonization in America found 
its impulse in the patriotic pride and chivalric spirit 
of that many-sided monarch, Henry the Fourth. 
This landfall at Mount Desert, which we celebrate 
today, connects itself directly with the revocation of 
the Edict of Nantes signed by Henry in 1598. That 
decree meant nothing less than the speedy return of 
commercial prosperity to France and the possibility of 
carrying out the King's ambition to make France a 
power on the sea and to promote adventure and dis- 



covery and trade in distant lands. Several attempts 
at settlement in New France were made but nothing 
permanent was accomplished and in 1604 Henry com- 
missioned a Huguenot gentleman, Pierre Du Guast, 
Sieur de Monts to head a colony, granting to him a 
monopoly of trade and vice-regal authority. De 
Monts associated with himself a number of merchants 
and adventurers and among them was the pilot-general 
of the French navy, Samuel de Champlain. 

This man, whose word and valor this stone com- 
memorates, was a true hero. Throughout a long and 
adventurous career he displayed a steadfast courage, 
a resourceful mind, a kindly heart, an indomitable 
patience. Though a devout Catholic he was extraordi- 
narily tolerant in religion. Though strict in discipline 
he was considerate, just and merciful. Though his 
opportunities for education must have been scanty, 
yet he wrote and drew remarkably well, and there is a 
blitheness of mood about him, a friendliness of spirit, 
a quaintness of speech that must have made him a 
rarely good comrade and an inspiring leader. 

Champlain was born in 1567, in the little town of 
Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay, some twenty miles 
south of La Rochelle. His father was a captain in 
the royal navy, and one of his uncles was a pilot 
in the king's service. Champlain was familiar with 



boats from boyhood, and the sea laid a strong hold 
upon his imagination. In the dedication of one of 
his books he says : " Among the most useful and 
excellent arts navigation has always seemed to me to 
take the first place. In the measure that it is danger- 
ous and accompanied by a thousand perils, by so much 
is it honorable and lifted above all other arts, being in 
no wise suitable for those who lack courage and confi- 
dence. By this art we acquire knowledge of various 
lands, countries, and kingdoms. By it we bring home 
all sorts of riches, by it the idolatry of Paganism is 
overthrown and Christianity declared in all parts of 
the earth. It is this art that has from my childhood 
lured me to love it, and has caused me to expose 
myself almost all my life to the rude waves of the 
ocean." When he enlisted in De Monts' expedition 
he was about thirty-seven years old. He had already 
made an adventurous journey to Panama and the Span- 
ish main, and he had just returned from a voyage to 
New France and the River St. Lawrence. 

De Monts sailed with his company in March, 1604, 
and after coasting along the shores of Nova Scotia and 
up into the Bay of Fundy, he chose as the site of the 
colony an island in the river which now bears the 
name which he gave to his settlement, Saint Croix. 
There the colonists passed the summer clearing the 



ground, building their fort and setting up their houses, 
and early in September, after the ship that brought 
them had gone back to France to bring out reinforce- 
ments in the succeeding spring, Champlain took twelve 
of the men, together with two Indians, and set out on 
a voyage of discovery along the coast to the westward. 
They sailed in a big open boat which Champlain called 
a " patache." As depicted in Champlain's drawing of 
the St. Croix settlement this boat had a single lateen 
sail, but when the wind was ahead they used oars. 
Now let me quote Champlain's own narrative: 

" Setting out from the mouth of the St. Croix and 
sailing westward along the coast, we made the same 
day some twenty-five leagues and passed by many 
islands, reefs, and rocks, which sometimes extend 
more than four leagues out to sea. The islands 
are covered with pines, firs, and other trees of an 
inferior sort. Among the islands are many fine 
harbors, but undesirable for permanent settlement. 

"The same day (September 5, 1604) we passed 
near to an island some four or five leagues long, in 
the neighborhood of which we just escaped being lost 
on a rock that was just awash and which made a hole 
in the bottom of our boat. From this island to the 
mainland on the north the distance is not more than 
a hundred paces. The island is high and notched in 



places so that from the sea it gives the appearance of 
a range of seven or eight mountains. The summits 
are all bare and rocky. The slopes are covered with 
pines, firs, and birches. I named it Isle des Monts 
Desert." 

The next day the voyagers had a conference with 
some Indians who came out to meet them and who 
agreed to guide them to the Penobscot. They sailed 
up that river to the point where Bangor now stands 
and then passed out by Owl's Head, and continued 
west as far as the Kennebec. Then, as their provisions 
were running low, they ran back before the wind and 
arrived at St. Croix on the third of October, or just 
a month after they set out. When we consider what 
watchfulness is required in these days of light-houses, 
charts, buoys and beacons, to navigate among the 
numberless islands and sunken ledges of this ragged 
and fog-haunted coast, what shall we say of the seaman- 
ship and adventurous courage of the first pioneers. 

The St. Croix colony did not endure, but the name 
of Champlain is writ large on this continent. For 
fortitude, devout serenity, and prudent zeal it would be 
hard to match this pioneer of New France. Champlain 
became the father of Canada and the bold explorer 
of the western wilds. He planted the fleur-de-lis on 
the rock of Quebec, and there on Christmas day of 



1635 ne d^d, striving to the last for the welfare of his 
colony and glad to draw his last breath in the wilder- 
ness, where, as he wrote, he had " always desired to 
see the Lily flourish and the true religion, Catholic, 
Apostolic, and Roman." We do well to commemo- 
rate this modest hero and his half-forgotten adventures 
on these coasts. His heroic monument stands fitly at 
Quebec, but this stone will remind many a fortunate 
sojourner here of the dauntless Frenchman, who first 
of white men, looked upon this favored island and 
gave to it the name it bears. 



lines; bij ifou. William Abamn Irnuitt, S. & 



Wa (Cljamplain 

If, from some eyrie in the distant sky, 

Thine eagle eye, still sweeping o'er the main, 
Upon this rock-bound coast should chance again, 

Which first thy searching vision did descry; 

Then shall this boulder, which to-day we raise, 
As messenger a silent greeting bring 
From the new friends whose later voyaging 

Has found safe haven in these quiet bays. 

Many fair gifts, bold courser of the seas ! 

Thy laughing France with lavish hand has showered 
Upon this daughter of the West,— undowered 

When first she knelt and clasped her sister's knees. 

One gift France held, and lightly tossed aside, — 
A barren isle, sea-swept and tempest-driven ; 
Its lonely hills unsealed, its rocks unriven 

In that far day when thou didst pass in pride. 

Desert the name thou gavest, great Champlain ! 

Desert she seemed, — this island of our love ; 

Yet in her dales the birches' silver grove 
Reared its white columns for her sylvan fane. 

By the bare rocks that buttress Sargent's crown 
The scarlet lily shamed the evening sky ; 
While on the bosom of the lake hard by 

Her snow-white sister nestled gently down. 



From out these mossy glades, fern-canopied, 
The orchid raised his purple-fringed head, 
And the shy twin-flower softly carpeted 

The silent paths thou didst disdain to tread. 

Desert the isle, such joys as these doth hold ! 

Nay, dauntless traveller, return once more ! 

The scenes so quickly left again explore, 
And thou shalt see new graces still unfold. 

No longer now the silent spaces yield 

Such song alone as woodland minstrels raise ; 
Here Man with Nature joins his voice in praise 

For wounds bound up and ancient sorrows healed. 

Here shalt thou see in goodly fellowship 

Ripe age with youth go laughing side by side 
Down some long alley of the woods, where hide 

Sweet treasures waiting for the eye and lip. 

Across the bosom of this sparkling sea, 

Through which of old thy piercing prow did glide, 
Thou shalt behold white canvas swell in pride, 

And on the breeze that blows so merrily 

Shalt hear anon, if such thy happy chance, 
Quick wit so lightly flash in quip and jest 
Thou shalt transfer thine East unto our West, 

And think thyself again at home in France. 



